Chapter 1

Ten Years Ago

Love. My grandma warned me that love would be the death of me. She just knew. I’d be running around with my boyfriend, skinny dipping in the river, sneaking out through my bedroom window to spend the night with him under the canopy of trees in the magical nearby forest, and staying out until sunrise.

Grandma would always wait for me when I got back at dawn, asking where I’d been and with who.

“I’m in love,” I’d tell her. And she’d shake her head and tell me love would be the death of me.

I never imagined she was right. But she was.

“Esma, stay with me,” he wails pain thick in his voice.

We found our love late. Found it buried under years of pretending, denying, and looking the other way. Found it only after another tried to take me away.

Found it too late.

I try to tell him it will all be all right. That I always knew I would end like this. That my grandma warned me years ago.

He’s crying. The man I’ve never seen shed a tear before is weeping over me.

I try to speak. Try to soothe his pain. Try to ask for one last kiss.

But no sound comes from my lips.

He seems to hear me despite that, leans down, and plants his soft, tear-wetted lips on mine.

He is the best kisser I’ve ever known. And this kiss is the best kiss I’ve ever had.

My last. 

Chapter 2

Eva

I’m not often up at dawn, because morning is not my best time of day, never was, never will be. But in Mark’s cottage, I don’t mind waking up with the hens, as they say. The wraparound windows in the living room are showing me the long narrow valley covered with rows of grapevines, which are just starting to grow fresh leaves. The sky above the hill rising above them is shaded red, yellow, purple, and pink, the colors flowing into each other and casting a copper-red sheen on the world. I’ve never seen this shade of sunrise before, but then again, I haven’t seen many sunrises, so that could be why.

I woke up about half an hour ago, but I’m still not fully awake. I’m only up this early because I have an article due in two days, and I barely started writing it.

It’s been years since I worked as an investigative journalist. For the last three, I’ve been writing true crime books, or more precisely, in-depth biographies and psychological profiles of notorious serial killers.

But my good friend from university and editor at the Guardian asked me to write a series of articles, outlining the major points from my books. My publisher agreed it was a good promotion, so here I am, writing for newspapers again. At first, it sounded like a good way to take a break from writing books. But now, with the first article due and none of them written, I’m having some serious second thoughts.

Though my sluggishness at getting to work is probably due to Mark and me enjoying something very close to a honeymoon since we moved in here a few months ago. To his cottage, the one he worked on restoring for a year while we were not speaking, is a dream home in more ways than one. It’s located in the village of Sveto, in the windy seaside region of Slovenia, where wine is plentiful, people are friendly and nice, and life is just slow and easy. I’ve never lived in a small town, let alone a village and I never thought I’d like it. I really do.

I also didn’t even know just how much baggage I’ve been carrying from the years I spent buried in researching psychos and killers, starting with the Fairytale Killer. The one that made me famous. The one that shattered my relationship with Mark.

More followed. Ten of them that I wrote books on, and about ten more that I just interviewed with a view of understanding the psychology better. There’s no understanding the psychology, not really.

And now there’s the eleventh. The one Mark and I, with the help of the special Europol task force, caught just a few months ago. I went into the case intending to write a book about him. I haven’t even started it.

He was the killer that brought Mark and me back together and honestly, I’ve just felt too good getting to know Mark again after the three years we spent apart, that I just didn’t want to invite any darkness into it.

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The mystery and crime fiction books by LJ Bourne DO NOT feature any steamy scenes, but the stories usually have romantic elements in them.